Get your run and meditation on!

In our deadline-driven world, running has gained tremendous popularity recently as a means of getting away from it all and connecting with the outdoors, while getting fit and sweating out the pressure of the daily grind.

Meditation has also gained a huge foothold recently, as people turn inward to try and calm their racing minds, regain control, and let go of an overwhelming flood of thoughts.

The challenge with both running and meditation is that we're rarely skilled enough to truly let go of it all. No matter how much we run, we can't leave our troubles behind. And while meditation sounds great on paper, it's hard to find the time, and when we finally do, it's often incredibly challenging to get the body and mind to cooperate.

But what if there was a way to tame the mind, while simultaneously training your body?

That's where mindful running steps in. It helps bring a meditative practice to your movement, creating a healthier way to run, that's more enjoyable, with better results for body, mind and soul.

The term "mindful running" may be new, but the practice has existed for thousands of years. From the Tibetan lung-gom-pa runners, to the "marathon monks" of Japan, to the Incan messengers of Machu Picchu, humanity has a long history of pairing running with meditation.

Take the ancient lung-gom-pa runners. Initiates would spend three years in silent meditation, focusing solely on emptying their minds and controlling their breaths, before allowed to take a single step. Yet once they'd tamed their minds, they could run almost effortlessly incredible distances, up to 400 miles at a go, according to The Way of the White Clouds by Lama Anagarika Govinda and Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel.

By focusing on mindfulness and breath, these runners are said to have achieved a sense of enlightenment here on earth, and an almost superhuman state of fitness. But you needn't lock yourself up for three years to enjoy tremendous benefits. Instead, by focusing on three key elements anyone can do, you can bring more presence, peace and fitness to your walks and runs.

1. Run in sync with your breath.

The breath brings in energy, or prana, and is our metronome and guide. Moving breath-centered, we reconnect with our bodies, moving more efficiently and relaxed. Inhaling deep brings in more oxygen, calms our nervous system and reduces muscle tension.

How to begin? Start walking, and later, slowly running in sync with your breath. It doesn’t matter your pattern to begin, just get your breath and steps together. For instance, inhale, step, step, step, exhale, step, step, step.

Next, always breathe through your nose down to your diaphragm. Rapid mouth breathing triggers an inflammatory fight or flight response, while nasal belly-breathing does the reverse, slowing the heart while soothing and healing the body.

2. Watch your stride.

Most runners fight their bodies, pounding along, and struggling to breathe. The average runner’s stride has us hitting the brakes with each step. Yet the body gives us clues to move better. Once we gain awareness, we quickly lose the huffing and puffing, and pounding along.

How to begin? First, watch and listen to your footsteps, working to shorten and silence your stride. This means less bouncing, wasted effort and potential joint damage. Second, keep your arms up and high, never swinging side-to-side.

The higher your arms, the quieter you land, the less you swing sideways, the less torque on knees, hips, and back. Third, picture a silvery string, pulling upward through your head toward the sky. The taller you run, the lighter, with less stress on your shoulders, back and knees.

3. Practice Ten Count breathing.

When you’re focused on body and breath, there's little room left for extraneous thought, instead you focus 100% attention on the task at hand while running firmly in the now. This doesn’t just quiet the mind, but rewires you for greater concentration, awareness, and creativity throughout the day.

How to begin? The simplest way is the Ten Count.

• Begin with 5 minutes of walking or jogging.
• Simply count ten inhalations and exhalations, and then repeat.
• If a stray thought comes up, drop it like a hot potato, then go right back into your count.

By rewiring the mind, and improving our health, mindful running can be a life-transformative experience. It helps us get back in our bodies, let go of stress, get fit, and to heal. More importantly, it gives us the gift of silence, even on a busy street.

By slowing our racing minds, we have more room to think more clearly, be more compassionate, especially toward ourselves, connect with the earth, and to discover improvement in all areas of our lives.

So focus on your breath, drop those thoughts and watch those steps. Then, you too, can experience the pure joy of mindful running.

by Michael Sandler

Expressing the Aliveness of a Need

When expressing an unmet need, your tone, energy, and manner reveal where your attention is.  When your attention rests on the aliveness of the need itself, there is a greater aliveness in you and an increased possibility that your listener will be able to connect with you.

Let's take an example from a gem reader named Rob.  Rob says he has difficulty sharing his feelings and needs. He longs to be seen and celebrated. He wants his partner Chris to ask him more questions about his experiences each day and to initiate conversations about their relationship as often as he does.

Coming from the hurt of his unmet need around being seen, Rob communicates to Chris:

"I need as much attention as I give you. I feel left out and unattended and uncared for. I need you to take as much interest in my life as I take in yours. I feel like I am not important to you."

Rob has attempted to communicate his feelings and needs. Tragically he has likely inspired guilt,defensiveness, and disconnect. He has told Chris what he thinks Chris is doing or not doing rather than actually sharing his feelings and needs. Following the structure of Nonviolent Communication, Rob might have said the same thing this way:

"When I notice that at dinner last night we talked about your day for 30 minutes and my day for 10, I feel sad and disappointed because I long to be seen and cared for. Would you be willing to take more time to hear about my day tonight at dinner?" 

This expression will increase the chances of Rob being heard and still there is something missing and Rob's heart is not fully expressed.  The felt sense or quality of the needs is missing.

To express the aliveness of your need,  you can begin by asking yourself to slow down and take a few minutes to experience the need that is alive for you. Allow your total attention to be in the experience of the need. Drop the other person and the circumstance for the moment. Bringing up a memory of when the need was met can help.  For example, to do this Rob can ask himself, "What is the experience of being seen and heard fully? What does it feel like in my heart and body?"  Rob then takes a few minutes to experience the feelings and sensations that come up.

Creating this level of connection with your own needs, the other person gets to experience the aliveness of your need rather than what's lacking. From this place of connection to the aliveness of your needs a natural giving from the heart arises.

Having connected more fully to his needs, Rob might express himself like this:

"I feel sad because I long to be seen for all of who I am and at the same I feel excitement when I think about sharing more of who I am with you. I have so much that I want to share – what I'm excited about, what's hard for me, what I am learning. Chris can you tell me what you are hearing me say?"

Shifting to sharing your needs from the aliveness of the need makes it easier to let go of judgments about how the other person is wrong or neglectful. Your needs are you own, to honor and enjoy, and to meet in a way that has you thriving with aliveness.

Practice
This week practice connecting to the aliveness of your need by expressing a celebration of a need met each day.

LaShelle Charde

Vulnerability & Feedback

As someone who values compassionate communication, you know that when you allow yourself to share in a more vulnerable way with others there is an opportunity for a more fulfilling connection.

But asking yourself to be more vulnerable, isn't a do-able request, it's more like a reference to a basket of needs that you would like to have met; connection, like I mentioned above, along with being seen & heard, mutuality, empathy, acceptance, and intimacy, to name a few.

Allowing yourself to "be more vulnerable" (which could be translated as share more of who you are) and get some of these needs met requires a lot of little actions along the way.  For simplicity sake, let's look at just two categories of actions:
1.  Evaluate and Create Supportive Conditions
2.  Ask for feedback by makin in the moment connection requests of others and yourself

1.  Evaluate and Create Supportive Conditions  
If you are someone who is attempting to share more of who you are, then your default sharing mode is probably one in which you share as little as possible.  Your unconscious habit is to evaluate conditions as unsafe to share.

The first action to take is to catch this unconscious pattern at work.  It's probably easiest to do this when you are moving from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar environment.  Look for signs of withdrawing, like subtle body tension, narrow focus, and tight mouth or throat.

The next action is to bring this evaluation to conscious awareness.  This means actually looking around and asking yourself, does this seem like a safe environment?  If you do this in superficial sort of way it won't work.  It's important to focus your attention and really take in the environment and people.  Some evaluation questions might be:  Are people looking at each other?  Are people smiling?  Is body posture mostly open or closed?  Is there a lot of distraction in the environment interfering with an ability to connect or is the environment basically peaceful and protected from distraction?  Is there a time pressure or schedule?

Based on what you notice, you determine what amount of vulnerable sharing the conditions currently support.  For example, a ten minute coffee break at work might support a conversation about what you did on vacation, but not a conversation about the custody battle you are in with your ex-partner.  If you shared about the custody battle on the coffee break, you wouldn't likely get the empathy and listening that honors the vulnerability of your sharing.

Create supportive conditions by making requests of yourself and others before you share.  Such requests might include the following:

• Ask yourself what you want back from the other person before you share.
• Discern the circumstances that would best support your sharing.  This might mean asking yourself to wait for a particular time and place before you share.  It might mean deciding between an on the phone or in person dialogue.
• Make a request of the other person about what you are wanting back and when you would like to share.  For example, "I am wanting to talk about what happened with the doctor's visit today and just need some empathy.  Would you be up for sitting on the couch and talking after dinner?
• Make a request about the amount of time you would like for the dialogue.  With time it's not so much about the exact amount of time, but rather the amount of receiving a particular time frame supports.  For example, saying "I'd like to just to take as much time as we need this evening to talk about the upcoming move" creates a spaciousness for connection, even though conversation might last fifteen minutes or two hours.

 
2.  Ask for feedback by making in the moment connection requests of others and yourself
Connection requests are requests that create connection around what is expressed in the moment.  You have likely had the experience of sharing something vulnerable and then feeling it just float there in the air between you and the other person.  Neither of you really know what to do with what was shared.  Connection requests give you something to do in that moment.  They are a way to move forward in the conversation.  Here are some examples of connection requests:

• What comes up for you hearing that?
• I'm looking for empathy, can you tell me what you understand about my experience?
• I'm not sure I'm making sense, can you tell me what you got from what I said?
• Looks like something comes up for you hearing what I said.  Would you be willing to say?
• I shared that because I want to celebrate.  Can I get a high five?
• Saying I'm sick I am just looking for sympathy.  I'd like to hear something like "I'm sorry you're sick".
• When you are silent as I talk I am not sure you are with me.  If you are connecting to what I am saying, could you give me an uh-huh, or a head nod?
• Sharing my story, I am not sure if I am way off or not.  Could you tell me if it makes sense to you?

 
Of course all these requests also work in the reverse.  When someone else shares something vulnerable you could ask if they want any of these things from you.
 
Feedback is something we constantly rely on from others.  As social beings we need to know how we are affecting others and if we are accepted and in harmony with the group.  We get that feedback primarily through body language and facial expression and secondarily through words.  When you want a connection to be deeper or clearer, asking for feedback is a useful way to get there.  When you evaluate and create supportive conditions and ask for feedback, you can experience a whole new quality of connection.
 
Practice
This week choose one of the actions listed above to practice.  Pick a particular environment or relationship in which to practice.

LaShelle Charde

If not you...

If not you…

If you’re not the one providing your partner with validation, affirmation, and/or reassurance I can guarantee you that someone else will.

Once your partner begins to feel that s/he can’t trust you with daily activities, frustrations, inner thoughts and fears then expect disconnection and disengagement to strengthen.

For example:

A comes home from work and expresses a concern that (pick one: he’s about to be fired, he feels your connection has weakened, or he doubts his abilities in general).

You (Y) dismiss his concerns, or tell him he’s being foolish, or ignore his concerns and without providing validation begin talking about your own problems.

A stops sharing.

Remember…if not you then someone else will be available to replace the need that you haven’t or won’t meet.

A goes to the gym to let off steam. There he runs into S. S begins to ask how he’s been lately and A opens up about a concern. S listens. S affirms. S reassures.

A becomes less inclined to open and share with Y because, based on past experience, he believes Y does not care and will reject his need for emotional closeness, validation, etc. Instead, A waits until he sees S again and seeks the emotional support that S is willing to provide. An emotional bond has begun.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Love means listening to your partner and being available, present and mindful when your partner needs you. Love means making the choice to support your partner. Love means making your partner a priority.

If you don’t make the choice to listen to your partner then someone else will.

When is the relationship over? 5 signs it’s time to move on.

1.  When you stop trying.

2.  When the relationship causes more sadness than joy.

3.  When your emotional support is elsewhere.

4.  When you live separate lives.

5.  When you dream about the perfect relationship and it’s not the one you’re in.

Breaking up is hard. It’s difficult. It sucks.

But sometimes it needs to be done.

I know…I always promote repair, attempts, connection, re-connection….

It’s like this: if your hand hurts  - you don’t cut it off. If your hand really hurts – you take a pill. If your hand really, really hurts – you see a specialist. If your hand is turning black, is numb and is killing you – it’s time to cut it off.

Relationships aren’t much different. Really. If you’ve worked on your relationship and made the choice to love your partner then you’ll do the work to keep the relationship strong.  But if you’ve exhausted quality time, and the laughter is gone and you feel like you’re the only one shouldering the weight of keeping the relationship going…then it’s time to decide if the relationship is over.

When you stop trying to find solutions to conflicts and just argue then you’ve stopped putting in the effort to make things work and when you’ve both given up on reparative effort then the end is not far off.

If you look back over the past three months and experienced more nights in tears than in giggles…perhaps your relationship isn’t the healthiest for you. A little friction in a relationship isn’t bad..it’s actually quite normal. What you don’t want is the scale tipped in the direction of sadness, melancholy, and dejection. This isn’t healthy and it needs to be fixed before you start manifesting your feelings as headaches, stomach aches and fatigue.

You’re having a bad day. You’re sad, upset, frustrated and it shows. Your brow is furrowed; Tears glisten in your eyes and you can barely manage a smile. You just want your partner to ask how your day was and then listen.  You want empathy, validation, or a shoulder to cry on. Only, your partner is no longer the first person you go to when you’re upset. You’ve been conditioned that he doesn’t want to hear what you have to say…or he changes the subject…or he only wants to hear ‘happy talk.’ Women typically have best friends that they seek out when they have a problem, but when you feel like you can’t bare your soul to your partner chances are you’re on your way out of the relationship.

You want to be a priority. You deserve to feel like a priority in your relationship. If your partner is no longer asking about your day…or not asking follow up questions to, “how was your day?” then he’s just not interested. The two of you have separate activities and rarely spend quality time together…it begins to look like you no longer care about one another. You’ve lost interest and are leading separate lives. You co-exist and the relationship is over.

If you are picturing the perfect relationship and comparing how it differs from the one you’re in…then something is definitely wrong with your relationship. Maybe you begin thinking about what you want in the future…you may even fantasize about past relationships…you only know that the relationship perfect for you is not the one you’re in. If you find yourself uncomfortable around happy couples….It’s time to find happiness.

Ideally you will identify markers that signify the beginning of the end of your relationship. An intimate relationship can be revived …but both partners have to want it…and want it badly.  You will need to reach outside your comfort zone and do the work.  Everyone wants to be happy. Ideally you can be happy together.

Sadly, sometimes being happy means starting out alone.

How do I know if I'm with the right one?

If you are beginning a relationship, below are some simple questions to ask yourself in determining if you are with the perfect person for you (because there is no perfect person!). If you are already in a relationship or married – don’t despair. If you answer “no” to any of the questions it doesn’t mean that all hope is lost…it just means that you have to work a little harder to build a strong relationship that is perfect for you.

The first question to ask is:

Do we have the same goals?

And by having the same goals I don’t mean, “we both want a really big house on the water.”  It’s not important what your house looks like on the outside – it’s how it feels on the inside. Is your home filled with love, respect, trust, laughter, etc.

Don’t think, “We want to make a lot of money.” Of course that would be nice… instead, what goals do you want to meet by having a lot of money? Is there a charity you want to support?

Having goals in common is helpful in determining your common passions.

The second question to ask is:

Am I physically attracted to my partner?

We all know that we are initially drawn to someone we find physically attractive. We also keep those fires burning and those passions ignited by maintaining a level of attractiveness to our partners.

Ladies, do you dress for work or look your best when going out with your friends? Do you find yourself coming home to slip on yoga pants and pull your hair up into a ponytail? Remember what you looked like when you attracted your man. Chances are you had on makeup, a coifed hairdo and a recent pedicure.  Don’t forget…he’s exposed to women during the day who are GOING OUT and looking their best…not women dressed for lounging around comfy on the sofa.

Gentleman, the same goes for you. When was your last shower? Did you shave this past weekend? Were you wearing cologne when you met your partner? Men, your woman is out seeing me who are looking their best! Don’t throw on the t-shirt from yesterday after giving it a quick sniff test…put on a clean shirt and present yourself to your partner like you did when you first met.

The third question is different for men and for women.

For women, the question is “Do you respect him?” It is a big deal for a man to have his partner respect him. A man needs to be respected and wants to be loved.

I often equate ‘respect’ with putting your partner first. Log off Facebook and talk to your husband when he comes home from work. Show him you care and honor him.

A woman needs to be loved and wants to be respected.

 The question for men is, “Will you be happy making her happy for the rest of her life?”

A man’s job in a relationship is to make his partner happy. Men are doers. Typically they like to have a job.

Ladies, help him to make you happy and do so in a way that builds him and doesn’t confuse or burden him. If you need help around the house – suggest ways for him to help you. If you’d like perfume for your birthday steer him away from buying you a new vacuum cleaner. Work together to create and sustain happiness in a relationship.

Very simple questions that require very simple answers.

The execution requires effort.

If you have found the perfect person for you – then let that person know how perfect s/he is!

If you aren’t sure your person is perfect for you then think about the ways to work together to make your relationship work.

If you have recently started dating and you’ve answered “no” to any of the questions, then re-evaluate your choice and consider that perhaps this person is not perfect for you…remembering there is no perfect person.

Self-Love